


dig through the graveyard; rub the bones against my face

by the_everqueen



Series: love to the ghosts [4]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, John Laurens Lives, Period-Typical Sexism, discussion of slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 06:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15943361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_everqueen/pseuds/the_everqueen
Summary: Mattie did not ask to be John's Penelope, and John makes a poor Odysseus





	dig through the graveyard; rub the bones against my face

**Author's Note:**

> mind the tags: this fic involves discussion of slavery from the perspectives of people in positions of power. i wanted to respond to characterizations of historical John Laurens as a "good/progressive" person because he advocated abolishing slavery. while his efforts to provoke change were indeed commendable, acknowledging enslaved persons as PEOPLE with basic rights was the bare minimum. here i'm borrowing from Massey's "John Laurens and the American Revolution," where he criticizes Laurens for not recognizing there needed to be work beyond just emancipation, in order to secure full rights for Black Americans and dismantle a system inherently based on racism and violence. likewise, while Mattie is disenfranchised under a sexist society, she's equally as culpable in this system. 
> 
> face cast for John is Anthony Ramos; Mattie is Ariana Debose (particularly Ariana with her long hair done in braids)
> 
> title comes from TMG's "unicorn tolerance"

_ 1793 _

It wasn’t that Jack was useless, exactly, but that he got underfoot. He lurked in doorways and drifted through halls, he abandoned his papers to make awkward conversation with his daughter, he offered to help with chores and took twice as long to do them badly as Mattie would have on her own. She started giving him tasks just to get him out of the house, otherwise he would roam like a child and she’d never get her work done. Uncharitable, perhaps — the man had recently lost his father. But who visited Henry in the Tower of London? Who gave him updates on his granddaughter? Who nursed him when he was sick, sat vigil with him the night he died, watched the air sigh from his chest and not return? Not John Laurens.

Mattie was tired of making excuses for her husband. 

Frances complained about him with all the explosive feeling of a teenage girl. “He keeps asking about my studies. Like I care about Latin. I try to tell him it’s fine, but then he wants to go over Virgil with me.”

“He’s just trying to figure out what interests you.” Mattie frowned at the page of ink blots and scratched out sentences Jack had left on the parlor desk. She set it aside for a clean sheet of paper to make a list. “He wants to be involved.”

“He should have tried that years ago.”

“Frances.”

“What? It’s true.”

“He’s… going through a hard time.”

Frances scowled. “He didn’t even like Papa.”

“That was still his father.”

Sullen silence. Mattie, adept at snatching quiet moments to get things done, wrote down the tasks that needed to be done tomorrow: ordering new bolts of homespun for the field hands, taking inventory of the cellar, getting a report from the overseer. While Jack routinely tried to help her darn socks or care for the garden, he shied from assuming any of his duties as owner of Mepkin. As though him ignoring the reality of the lives around him made him less culpable in their being here. Meanwhile Mattie had learned how to manage the estate from Henry, as his health began to decline.  

She held all the power at Mepkin, but she didn’t feel less trapped.

Sometimes she tried to remember what her seventeen year old self dreamed about her future. She was the same age as Frances when she and Jack Laurens stumbled into bed, drunk off stolen liquor and groping for unfamiliar parts in the dark. Back then she’d thought the freckled, golden-eyed boy fantastic, with his syrupy drawl and revolutionary ideals. His life — growing up on a lush plantation in the colonies, studying abroad, being involved in politics — seemed so removed from hers, a merchant’s daughter in an increasingly industrial city. She hadn’t wanted to get pregnant. She just wanted to get out of her cramped life. Be someone else. But it turned out Martha Manning Laurens wasn’t doing much better. 

Frances said, “It was easier when he wasn’t here.”

Mattie sighed. “I know.”

  
  
  


One good thing about Jack coming back home was the dog he brought with him.

“His name’s Pythias,” Jack had said, and no further explanation. Big and square-headed, with soulful eyes, the dog took readily to Frances, following her around the grounds and sitting under the harpsichord while she practiced. In turn, Frances introduced him to the latest litter of barn cats and fed him scraps from her breakfast. Incredibly, though Frances scorned her father’s help with Latin, she allowed him to intrude on whatever games she played with Pythias. Mattie watched from the veranda as they played three-way fetch on a mild day: the game devolved into tug-of-war and ended with Jack on the ground, arms thrown up to protect his face from Pythias licking him while Frances held down his legs. 

Both of them were laughing. No words were exchanged. 

  
  
  


Mattie found the letter by accident. 

In hindsight it was ridiculous, something she’d expect of a son rather than a husband. She’d gone into the office for quiet while she tallied the house finances, and there on the desk was another one of Jack’s abandoned scribbles. She hadn’t meant to read it. Or maybe she had. Maybe she was curious as to what kept snatching her husband’s attention for long enough to commit ideas to paper, even if he didn’t see them through. Regardless, she went to push the paper aside and caught a glimpse of the first line.

~~_ my Dear Hamilton _ ~~

The bold line cut neatly through the words but did not obscure them. Mattie skimmed the rest, picking out phrases:  _ been having dreams _ and  _ missed you _ and  _ the way things used to be _ . The kind of sentiments a suitor wrote to a girl he fancied. Except John was writing to another man.

Mattie frowned. She remembered Hamilton; he’d passed along some of her letters to Jack during the war, and Jack had spoken highly of him, insofar as he bothered to mention anything on his end of things. Also he’d stayed with Hamilton and his wife before going to Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. But Jack hadn’t mentioned him since then. Mattie thought they were friends who’d fallen out of touch. She had to read the papers to learn about Hamilton’s bank — the bickering over federal power, the fever of speculation sweeping New York, the gossip around the Treasury Secretary and his influence. For her, Hamilton was no more real than the rest of Congress. Chess pieces on a board she couldn’t even see.

She knew about Jack’s… proclivities. Of course she did. The only time he touched her resulted in Frances; he never showed interest in her body or seemed to notice other women. Men, on the other hand: she’d caught him staring at one or two handsome lads in London. But she didn’t think he would — or that he had — 

Well. She had been wrong.

She tried to pin down what she was feeling. Not anger, or shock, or disappointment. Something more bitter. At least Jack could go to battle with Hamilton or visit Jefferson for weeks on end. Mattie was stuck here, isolated and dissatisfied in more ways than one. 

Speak of the devil: Jack wandered into the room, barefoot and wearing nothing but his shirt and breeches. His eyebrows went up when he saw Mattie, then drew together in a frown. “What’re you doing in here?”

“Housekeeping.” She held out the letter. “You left this.”

Jack’s face flushed red; he snatched the paper from her hand. “You have no right going through my things.”

Mattie rolled her eyes. “Fine, lesson learned.” She hesitated, fingers playing on the surface of the desk. “I didn’t know you kept in touch with Mr. Hamilton.”

His eyes narrowed to golden slits. “I don’t,” he mumbled.

She opened her mouth to protest, but then realized the letter — and the others Jack had left strewn about the house — was here, unsigned and unstamped. Had he sent any of them? She didn’t remember seeing a letter from Hamilton in the mail.

Jack fidgeted, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt like a child. 

“It’s fine. If you did. I don’t care.”

“... You’re not mad?”

“Because I’d never realized our marriage was a sham until this moment,” Mattie drawled. Jack flinched. She sighed. “Whatever. Do whatever you want. It’s not like I could stop you.”

He licked his lips. “Did you. Do you want a divorce?”

It was a sincere question —  _ what do you want, how do I fix this? _ — but it sent a cold pang through her stomach. She laughed, trying to dispel the feeling. “What good would that do me? Where would I go? You know how bad it would look to have one of the richest men in the States decide I’m no longer good enough to be his wife. My family is on the other side of an ocean. And what about you? You think everyone would tolerate your  _ inclinations _ without the screen of a well-bred woman?  _ Oh, I wonder what business brought Jack Laurens to stay at Monticello for over a month.  _ Sure, they’d turn a blind eye because you have money, but people would talk.”

“Jesus, Mattie.” And there was the anger. John could be so predictable. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Then leave me alone!” She hadn’t meant to yell, but the words burst out of her. She forced herself to take a breath. “You’ve done enough. I’m fine.”

“All right.” 

He didn’t leave.

“What do you want?”

“I was gonna look at some records.”

“I’m doing expenses.” She wrote down a figure before setting down her pen. “What records?”

John got the guilty, furtive look he always did when he was deciding whether or not to lie. He came to some kind of conclusion: his shoulders straightened and his jaw set. “I’m going to emancipate the estate.”

Mattie felt as though the bottom of her stomach had dropped out. “What?”

“When I made my proposal to Congress — the thing that kept me from taking any real action was that Father owned everything. I volunteered soldiers as my inheritance, but he was less than enthusiastic, and then Congress turned down the idea so it didn’t matter anyway.” He rocked forward on the balls of his feet, as though unable to stand still. “But now I can — I have the chance to do what’s right. Actions, rather than words.”

“So you’re going to… let them all go?”

“I’ll give them their papers,” he said. “And I’ll talk to Martha. Some of them belong to her but I didn’t want to break up families… I’m sure she would accept remittance.”

“It’s not that simple.” Mattie tried to grasp at the breadth of what he was proposing. The estate made a significant income from its crops, although those profits were offset by the cost of feeding, housing, and clothing over a hundred persons. There was also the debt from rebuilding the main house almost ten years ago. But then, another large portion of the Laurens wealth came from investments — investments she had helped cultivate as she assumed management of the estate. She knew how much hard cash they possessed down to the cent. Even without slave labor, they could live comfortably. More than. “You’d need someone to work the land. Unless you want to sell it?”

John chewed on his lower lip.

“Did you not think that far ahead?”

“Shut up,” he muttered. “I don’t, I don’t know.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Did you think about what happens to the slaves after you free them all? Where are they going to go, Jack?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Up North? Or out West, there’s — the government is giving land away in Ohio for people willing to develop it.”

“And I’m sure ‘people’ doesn’t have conditions on it.” She crossed her arms. “But let’s assume that’s true. How are they going to get there? We’re in South Carolina, you don’t think someone might try to capture and resell them?”

“You just don’t want to give up  _ this _ .” He gestured expansively at the room around them, with its lush carpets and carved wood.

“You’d blame me?” She laughed, harsh and bitter. “I was a merchant’s daughter. I lived in that wretched London apartment with our daughter while you went to war. I cared for  _ your _ ailing father and kept track of  _ your _ spending and made sure  _ your _ precious inheritance had warm clothes in winter. Fuck this.” She mimed his gesture back at him. “I never asked for any of it.”

“Neither did I!” He startled at his own outburst, shrunk back into the limpid figure he’d become since his return to Mepkin. “I — I’m sorry. That was — I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

He frowned. One hand crept under his shirt to press at his side. Against her will, Mattie felt a pang of pity for him: poor lost boy with no purpose in the absence of war. “I just want to do what’s right,” he said.

“You don’t have to ask my permission,” she replied. “You can do whatever you want.”

She gathered her pen, ink, and papers. Finances could wait. She had a letter to write.

  
  
  


_ Dear Mrs. Hamilton, _

_ While I know that we ourselves are not acquainted, I am writing to you on the merit of our husbands having been Close friends in the past. Forgive me my Presumption — you, of course, have no obligation to respond — but I feel a kinship between us, both having husbands who were in the War and then in government. I feel you must understand what it is to be Woman, to have to bear everything that’s neither war nor governing, to see your husband’s Private Face —  _

A knock on the door interrupted her painfully carving out sentences. Mattie covered her page with a piece of blotting paper and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Come in.”

Jack shuffled inside her bedroom. Pythias padded along after him, which answered her question of where the dog slept. “Hey.”

“What did you want?”

He winced. Pythias leaned against his thigh and pushed his square head into Jack’s hand. Jack took a deep breath, fingers playing gently with the dog’s ears. “I’m sorry. About earlier. And that I haven’t been a good — that you’ve had to handle so much on your own.”

She nodded. “Okay. Is that all?”

“The emancipation — I’m going to do it. I have to, I can’t —” His hand spasmed against the dog’s cheek. Pythias nudged him with a low whine. “But, you were right. There’s more than just letting everyone go. And I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to help me figure it out.”

“So you’re giving me more work.”

“No! You made good points, I thought —”

“Relax, John. Have you considered talking to some of the people involved? Maybe they have opinions on their future.”

He blinked, mouth going slack with embarrassment. “Oh.”

“Maybe you could start there.”

Swallowing, he gave a short nod. “Would you…?”

“If you draft a plan, I can tell you what’s viable.”

“I know there’s — Father was richer than God, so —” Pythias leaned against him and John calmed. For the first time, Mattie realized that in his weeks of haunting Mepkin, he hadn’t been grieving — or rather, he’d always been grieving, since before Henry died, since before she’d known him. This agitation was something else; a body twitching back into life. “I don’t want to — sharecropping, I was thinking about what you said and it seems cruel to keep a man in service in all but name — but a fair employment, with a contract that could be renewed or not. And maybe some kind of trade skills — Thomas is wrong to keep the profits from his boys’ nail forges, but the craftsman training — a craftsman could make a better profit than a laborer —”

“John,” Mattie interrupted. “That sounds good. How about you write those things down? Then you can discuss them with Zeno or Silas.”

“Yeah. Of course, yeah.” John cracked a half-smile, shy and soft around the edges. She felt the pull of it — not like her seventeen-year-old self did, fooling herself into believing it was romance, but for the gesture it was, allowing her to see his fragility. “Thanks, Mattie.”

“Any time,” she said, and meant it.

When he left, she started her letter over.   

**Author's Note:**

> the fire Mattie alludes to happened in 1784: British soldiers burned down Mepkin and historical Henry Laurens spent the rest of his life trying to pay off the cost of rebuilding the main house.
> 
> Thomas Jefferson did indeed have enslaved boys working in a nail forge he built on Monticello's grounds: the profits from it went towards paying off his debts. (source: Gordon-Reed and Onuf, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs")
> 
> i'm on tumblr @the-everqueen. comments are much appreciated.


End file.
